FINANCIAL REPORTING ON THE INTERNET AND THE PRACTICE OF CROATIAN JOINT STOCK COMPANIES QUOTED ON THE STOCK EXCHANGES Ivica PERVAN MSc Article* Faculty of Economics, Split UDC 657(497.5) JEL G32 Abstract In the last ten years, the Internet and applications of it have been increasingly wide- ly employed in modern business operations. In developed countries, the Internet is used with increasing frequency for financial reporting. And accordingly a large amount of academic research has been done into the area. Since no such research has yet been carried out in Croatia, it is a research area that is undoubtedly of interest. This inves- tigation was carried out on a basic sample of 38 joint stock companies quoted on Croatian bourses, the shares of all of them being actively traded. The results showed that twenty of the companies made use of Internet financial reporting and eighteen had no such practice. Companies that use Internet financial reporting on the whole publish the annual reports together with the reports of their auditors. In addition, most of the companies use the PDF format for the reports that they publish. Empirical data show that the firms that use Internet financial reporting are on the whole larger and more profitable, and that their shares are more active on the bourses than the shares of com- panies that have no such reporting practice. Also established was a statistically signif- icant propensity among financial institutions to use Internet reporting. Joint stock com- panies in the tourist sector were shown not to have a propensity for Internet financial reporting. Bearing in mind the expected growth of GDP, the growth of the capital mar- ket, with the constant growth in the number of Internet users, investment in financial reporting on the Internet could be a useful decision for joint stock companies that wish to enhance the transparency of their operations. Key words: financial reporting, joint stock companies, Internet, Croatia * Received: March 14, 2005 Accepted: May 17, 2005 159 I. Pervan: Financial Reporting on the Internet and the Practice of Croatian Join Stock Companies Quotes on the Stock Exchanges Financial Theory and Practice 29 (2), 159-174 (2005) 1 Introduction1 In the last ten years or so modern business operations have been increasingly charac- terised by greater involvement of the Internet. Today, numerous Internet applications are successfully employed in business, such as e-commerce, Internet banking and advertising. However, the Internet can also be utilised for the enhancement of the transparency of the operations of joint stock companies via the provision of useful financial and non-financial information to investors and other users. Such a practice has been known for some time already in developed market economy countries, where it is useful for corporations to use the Internet for their financial reports, as has been borne out by academic research. Since no scientific investigation of any scope has yet been carried out into financial reporting on the Internet, the area clearly makes possible a certain contribution to accounting research in Croatia. With respect to the research topic selected here, the following objectives stand out: the ascertainment of the level of practice reached of those Croatian corporations that are quoted on the bourses a propos Internet financial reporting and analysis of the factors that could possibly impact a decision concerning Internet financial reporting.2 In the ascertainment of the practice of those Croatian corporations that are quoted on the stock exchanges, special attention should be devoted to the extent, frequency and formats of the financial reports published. These are the features that are most frequent- ly analysed in the available empirical studies from other countries, and it is thus useful to be able to compare the level of Croatian corporations with that of the practice of cor- porations from developed countries (from, e.g., the USA, UK, Austria, Ireland and Sweden). As well as financial reporting practice, it would be interesting to analyse the characteristics of the companies that use this form of reporting, and to determine whether size, profitability or the given industry have any connections with the decision to publish or not to publish financial reports on the Internet. 2 Financial reporting and the Internet in the modern business environment 2.1 The frameworks of financial reporting and the most recent trends According to the modern framework, the objective of financial reporting is to sup- ply useful information to stakeholders. Thus, for example, the American FASB in its conceptual outline states that financial reporting should provide information useful to investors, creditors and other users (Kieso and Weygandt, 1986).3 The International Accounting Standards Board has a similar framework; this is the institution that devel- ops International Accounting Standards / International Financial Reporting Standards, applied throughout the world, and in use in Croatia since 1993.4 Financial reporting as 1 The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive recommendations. 2 The term bourse, in this research, is intended to mean an organised capital market 3 The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB is an independent institution in the private sector and finances the Financial Accounting Foundation (FAF). FASB develops accounting standards under the name of SFAS, which are applied in the US and were used in some European countries. 4 IASB is the operative body for the adoption of the standards of the International Accounting Standards Committee Foundation (IASCF), a non-profit institution founded in 1973 and reorganized in 2001. 160 I. Pervan: Financial Reporting on the Internet and the Practice of Croatian Join Stock Companies Quotes on the Stock Exchanges Financial Theory and Practice 29 (2), 159-174 (2005) understood in this paper implies the creation and presentation of accounting information useful to stakeholders. Accounting information is contained in financial reports; for example, IAS 1- Presentation of Financial Reports, defines the set and basic structure of the financial reports for companies that use IASB standards (IASB, 2000).5 Apart from by the conceptual frameworks of the IASB or the FASB, financial reporting can also be governed by additional regulations. For example, in Croatia, as well as the accounting standards of the IASB, there are a number of laws and Regulations that govern the entire framework of financial reporting for various purposes and users. Thus the framework of financial reporting in the broader senses means all the rules and laws that regulate finan- cial reporting. As individual countries have developed differently, so variations in the frameworks of financial reporting of the countries have come into being. American authors Mueller, Gernon and Meek (1994), analysing the differences in the context of financial reporting at the end of the 20th century, distinguish four models, the most important of which are the Anglo-American and the Continental European. Although the differences between Anglo-American and Continental European models of financial reporting can be con- sidered important even today, because of the process of the harmonisation of account- ing they will in the future tend increasingly to diminish. By harmonisation of account- ing one implies the increase in the compatibility of accounting practices by the defini- tion of the borders up to which they can vary (Nobes and Parker, 1998). For the current age is characterised by the globalisation of economies and the increasingly liberal flows of people, goods, capital and information. In such a business environment, financial reporting takes on a new dimension, and is gradually become the language of global business. The FASB and IASB are hard at work harmonising stan- dards as part of a project on the convergence of accounting standards. An essential role in the harmonisation of accounting in Europe is played by the EU. An advance towards the harmonisation of accounting was made by the EU Council of Ministers in 2002, when it made a decision according to which all joint stock companies the shares of which are traded on the capital markets in the EU must from 2005 onwards apply the IASB accounting standards (EU, 2004). A decision of this nature will certainly con- tribute to greater operational transparency, easier financial analysis and the faster and cheaper making of investment decisions. 2.2 The Internet and the application of it in modern business operations The year 1969 is usually stated as the year in which the Internet was developed. At that time, a national computer net called ARPANET was developed in the USA. Now the Internet links millions of computers and people all over the world. Today it includes numerous applications such as the Web, email, chat and remote exchange of data (FTP, File Transfer Protocol). Of all these applications, perhaps the Web is the best known; introduced in 1992, it has recorded a vast growth in the number of users worldwide 5 The complete set of financial reports, according to IAS 1, includes the balance sheet, the profit and loss account, statements on changes in equity, cash flow statements, accounting policies and notes. 161 I. Pervan: Financial Reporting on the Internet and the Practice of Croatian Join Stock Companies Quotes on the Stock Exchanges Financial Theory and Practice 29 (2), 159-174 (2005) (O’Leary and O’Leary, 2002).6 Each day, more than a billion people worldwide use the Internet, enabling an efficacious use of numerous business applications. Hence there is no wonder that today one of the most rapidly-developing of Internet applications is elec- tronic commerce. With the use of their credit cards, consumers can buy books, clothing, shares and cars all from their own homes. The use of the Internet is growing all around the world, as it is in Croatia as well. From data published during the elaboration of the Internet Development Strategy in Croatia it appears that at the end of 2003 about 18% of the population of Croatia (650,000) used the Internet (Kos and Baant, 2003).